“Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation”

“Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rangFrom morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted meWith a wild pleasure, falling on mine earMost like articulate sounds of things to come!So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!And so I brooded all the following morn,Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eyeFixed with mock study on my swimming book.”

“Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every thing has a life of its own, and that we are all one life.”

“Alas; they had been friends in youthbut whispering tongues can poison truth”

“Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.”

“As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast. - (1772-1834)”

“You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow.”